


Conversations In The Dark

by Leyenn



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>What might have happened if Bester hadn't been the bastard that he is but a rogue like Lyta.</i> A conversation in a different universe between two rather different people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Written for littlemimm for the [Babylon 5 Friendship Ficathon](http://ruuger.livejournal.com/99882.html).

"Well this is great. Just great." Michael Garibaldi kicked the large - and largely inconspicuous, right up until it had met with his foot, although that wasn't exactly difficult in this situation - rock he'd just stumbled over and bit back a growl of even more pain. "Not one of us thought to bring a damned flashlight?"

"If you simply put your feet where they should be, Michael, then there wouldn't be a problem," he heard from the grim, reddish Martian darkness ahead of him.

"That's fine for you to say," he grumbled back. "Not all of us could navigate these tunnels backward with our eyes closed."

He thought he even heard a rare laugh then, although these seemingly endless tunnels muffled sound enough that he could satisfy himself in thinking it just might have been a grunt of pain to match his own.

"Not that I would ever wish to disparage you, my dear Mister Garibaldi, of all people, but may I ask why you neglected to bring the flashlight you're asking for?"

_No, that's definitely a laugh._ Garibaldi grunted again and tested his weight over his right ankle, wincing at the answering snap of pain.

"Fine. Fine. I admit this was a stupid idea. In fact," he took a quick hop forward and stubbornly ignored his foot when it yelped, "this whole _thing_ is a stupid idea. I hate tunnels, and I _hate_ Mars - always have, always will."

"Always is a long time," he heard out of the darkness again. He sighed, wondering yet again why Sheridan had to pick Dexter to join him on this mission. Three weeks of cramped and dusty starship travel were bad enough, but thirteen hours in this dank underbelly of Martian gravity and he was about to go seriously crazy.

"How much further d'you think we have to go?"

A quiet snort of resigned amusement. "Considering the fact that our only guide turned out to be possessed by what may, or in fact may not turn out to be a Shadow servant, a conclusion we will never reach due to that unfortunate airlock incident-"

"-how _else_ do you think I should've handled it?!"

"-the answer to your question would be, 'I have not the slightest possible idea'."

"Good. Glad that's settled." He paused, waited until he'd managed to get his fogged brain to review that over again, and then stopped walking again and scowled into the murk. Again. "_Hey!_ Stephen!" _Damn you, I'll-_

"That _is_ anatomically impossible, Michael, as I've told you before, although you are still welcome to make the attempt when we get back to Babylon Five." Stephen Dexter's sense of humor, Garibaldi thought acidly, really was not built for close quarters.

"I know I'm not as young or unfortunately as attractive as my niece, Michael, but I also happen to know that you're not nearly as irritated with my presence on this mission as you pretend."

He sighed again. "Damned telepaths," he muttered not quite under his breath.

The sound of footsteps in front of him paused for a moment, and after a few steps of his own he could make out Dexter's form against the darkness of the rock surrounding them.

"Do I need to remind you that I happen to also be aware of your real feelings towards a certain telepath, Michael?" He wondered if that was a grin he could see faintly on the other man's face. "Admit it, you do like having us around."

"I admit you're - useful."

"Why, thank you for the gracious compliment, Mister Garibaldi." Within a single step now, Dexter held out a hand to him in quiet concern, fingers looking pale in the surrounding darkness. "How's the ankle?"  
Garibaldi rolled his eyes and waved the hand away. "Peachy."

"If you want to rest for a minute, it can't hurt. I imagine we're already late for whatever rendezvous was planned for us."

He tested the ankle again for a moment and considered options. Give it ten minutes and he'd probably be able to forget about it, a better idea than spraining the damn thing if he limped over the wrong bump in the floor. Especially since they were already late, and missing, and had no idea how honked off their possible co-conspirators would be when they finally came face-to-face. "Well, when you put it that way."

Dexter stood over him as he slumped - _carefully_ \- against the closest wall and slowly let himself drop until he hit dirt.

There was quiet for an awkward minute while Garibaldi shifted to somehow not be sitting on small sharp pointy rocks, and while Dexter made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of sitting at all. Eventually convinced that he wasn't about to rip any part of his pants - or anatomy, for that matter - open on Martian rock any time soon, Garibaldi cleared his throat.

"Don't tell me. Stuck together for weeks, no one else to talk to, no one else to trust, and now we finally have nothing to talk about?"

Dexter chuckled. "What would you like to discuss, Michael?" There was faint amusement in his voice. "I was personally amazed at how quickly we covered the topic of your romantic aspirations, not to mention the understanding that I am not under any circumstances to 'dredge your brain', as I believe you put it."

"We never quite covered your 'aspirations'," he couldn't help but point out.

"I aspire to the destruction of the Psi Corps, and to the ideals of my parents and those who struggled before them." Dexter's voice was suddenly so sincere it was almost frightening. "I aspire to winning this damned war. And at the moment, I am considering aspiring to getting out of these tunnels in a single piece, preferably the same approximate size and composition as when I entered."

Garibaldi rotated his ankle slowly. "No one you've got your eye on, then."

"If there were, by some chance, I doubt this would be the place and time I'd choose to discuss it."

"Aha." He grinned, reaching up the wall behind his back to inch the way back up to standing. "Not so single-minded after all."

Dexter hooked a pale hand under his elbow to help him up. "The beauty of telepathy, Michael, is that one does not need to be confined to a single mind."

He stared. "You're _kidding_. You don't."

"I have no idea what you could mean," Dexter said, close enough that Garibaldi could see the gloating glint of secretive pleasure in his eyes.

"No way. She's half your age, Stephen."

"Seventy is young in this day and age, or have you forgotten since last I had to remind you?"

Garibaldi smirked. "Well I don't know about that, but you've forgotten what happened the last time I had to remind you about your real age."

"Twenty-one eighty-nine -"

"- and it's twenty-two sixty, in this day and age," he cut in smoothly, and nudged them back down the endless tunnel.

Dexter wasn't giving up. "I wasn't born until August."

"Technicality." He really let the smirk fill his voice this time. "Besides, she nearly dated your granddaughter."

"Grandniece, if you really want to be technical about such things."

"Hate to break it to you, that just makes you sound older."

Dexter ignored him, as usual. "And she's not genetically -"

"First telepath to invoke genetics automatically loses the argument, didn't you learn that at school?"

"I should remind you that I spent a great deal of my school-age life evading the Corps," Dexter said, in that calm, unsettlingly light tone he had of talking about his past like it was nothing more than a very interesting school trip. "Besides, I heard," he lowered his tone a little, "absolutely nothing that indicated any official dating."

"Amen to that."

"_Michael_."

He made an innocent face, although whether Dexter could see it was probably a matter for debate. "I make a damn good grandson. Wholesome, my grandmother used to say."

"You've told me that story. You were seven."

"Would you be implying that I'm anything less than wholesome?"

"My dear Mister Garibaldi, I'm simply implying that you are somewhat more than wholesome." Dexter laughed quietly. "Oh, take no offence, Michael, you know how we telepaths are, always implying things we have no business discussing..."

Garibaldi made a sour face at the reminder. "Some people are just damned idiots," he said vehemently, and Dexter gave him a calm glance over one shoulder in return.

For about a second and a half, and then his face faded into a mask that Garibaldi recognised instantly and with a similarly instant sense of dread.

"Oh, hell. Where?"

"Right here," said a male voice who definitely wasn't Stephen, particularly since they spoke very suddenly from behind him and not in front. "And if you know what's good for your health, you two will stay right there." The business end of what felt like a primitive plasma rifle made itself comfortable between his shoulder blades; just to emphasis the point, it seemed.

A young woman with long blonde hair - almost white if compared to Talia's, even in the almost total lack of light - and a hard look in her eyes stepped out of the shadows on Dexter's left. She was dressed in a battered leather jacket over hard-wearing Martian surface gear, and she pointed a rather more modern PPG rifle point-blank at his chest.

"You'd better be who I think you are, or you both have about five seconds left to live."

Garibaldi smirked. He couldn't help it, it came as a natural reaction to less than classy death threats. "Lemme guess, show you some ID or... oh, wait, or what?"  
She looked at him in silence, for a long moment, and then snapped the weapon up.

"Michael Garibaldi, I presume," but she didn't look precisely at him as she said it - she looked just beyond his shoulder, just enough to make him frown but not quite enough, with that weapon in sight, to make him turn his back.

"And _you_ would be?"

She still watched him but didn't speak, and then a low, calm voice startled him from behind. "You should call her Number One, Mister Garibaldi. At least... for now."

This time he did turn around, looking beyond his would-be shooter - and blinked as he looked into blind eyes in a dark face that was smiling, smiling as if the whole crazy world were perfect behind that empty look.

"Stephen Dexter." The man swept out a hand, and then - in an instant - there was light as if it came from everywhere, and that smile was all the more insane and dazzling for it. "I've been waiting three years... and yet... almost a lifetime to meet you at last."

And then Garibaldi nearly grabbed his own head in shock as that same voice rocked through his mind like an electric hailstorm, even though the man's lips never parted.

_My name is Jason, and I'm here because of you._

And Dexter - even smudged with Martian dirt, cynical and exhausted, and to Garibaldi's eternal surprise - started to smile that same, perfect smile.

  


*

  



End file.
